Wanderer's mother isn't doing well. I know she's stressed and sorrowful because she knows it's now only a matter of time when her mother passes away. It makes me sad to realise there's nothing I can do or say to make her feel even a little better. I can't possibly know what it feels like to see someone you've known as strong and vital to fade away like that, and to be so aware that sometimes that once so vivid person doesn't always even recognise you.
I wish I could do something, say something to help her, just a little. I just don't know what.
She said that. I mean the teacher of the course in question. She gave me and my pair feedback on the presentation after I send e-mail conserning the presentation. It's good to have critical feedback so that I can improve my skills for all the forthcoming presentation I'll have in the future. One very brief presentation I have scheduled for next Friday when I can give a short analysis of the language Bush Jr. uses. I think I'm going to find the table I found by accident (thank heavens for synchronicity) about a forthnight ago. And then, of course, some examples of his numerous malapropisms. I'm not sure where to find a reliable source for word-to-word quotations from his speeches he's made over the years, but I'm sure I'll come up with something. It would be interesting to make a comparison between the frequency of certain words (i.e. terrorism, oil, Iraq...) in his speeches before and after 9/11.
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But the presentation I had two weeks ago. My teacher said that I cannot be held responsible for my involuntary physical reactions to the situations (fair enough). She said that my passion towards the subject really went beyond the course requirements. I'm not sure if Modernism really is something I'm that passionate about, though. It's more books and literature in general that I'm passionate about... and The X-Files, naturally. Fact forbid, if they ever make the mistake of letting me get started about The X-Files. I wish I had told them that.
Anyway, the transparencies were good, as was the audiovisual part of the presentation (I'm not sure if I've told you this but I showed them the beginning of The Hours as part of my Virginia Woolf section). I have to say that I get some twisted pleasure out of both my teacher and my pair saying that I should seriously consider becoming a teacher, possibly a literature teacher. Well, Wanderer just said to me on Wednesday being an English teacher isn't probably my future career. Now I'm not so sure. But I know one thing: if becoming a teacher means that I have to, at any point, go back to junior high (7th to 9th grade) I will not be a teacher. Well, unless I can, of course, do it without official qualifications and be an English teacher. As much as I love literature, I also love the English language more than Finnish (I would get fried for this notion by my major's teachers and co-students...). At some point I also appeared slightly militant (according to my teacher, at least; I myself have no recollection of this none whatsoever). I think I might have been telling the group to read so section of the handout. I was probably so ready to get their attention away from me that my voice may have sounded a bit too commanding. She also asked me whether I noticed how my audience reacted to my presentation (no, I was quite preoccupied with getting some part of my work gone through that I didn't really pay much attention to the rest of the group. According to my teacher and my pair I had their full attention at all times. Nice, all those eyes staring at me, no one playing with their cell phone or expressing their artistic ambitions on the carefully planned handout... not bad, I might add.
But all in all, as I have quoted in my title, my presentation was "very, very good" and my passion was noticeable (which, apparently, left her in an owe for a while). YAY! One thirds of my grade falling under the heading "very, very good" (which, hopefully, means a five).
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The Meme of the Day:
THE EVIL THAT MEN DO LIVES ON AND OOOOOON!
I've been humming and whispering this particular line since last night. Ari is a bloody good singer! Guy looks like a twelve-year-old but (possibly) sings better than Tony Kakko. And has better English (and longer hair).
I'm probably alone with this when I say that James Joyce's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" is so much easier to read (in linguistic level as well as to understand and follow) than Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre". And I find it more intriguing.
One of my teacher mentioned during one of the lectures that he subscribes a British magazine called 'Private Eye'. Even though the magazine is actuallly a satirical one making fun of celebrities and the British royalty and so on, I still can't help but stick with my first association with the name 'Private Eye' and think of a certain line by Detective Mills in Se7en:
"I've been trying to figure something in my head, and maybe you can help me out, yeah? When a person is insane, as you clearly are, do you know that you're insane? Maybe you're just sitting around, reading "Guns and Ammo", masturbating in your own feces, do you just stop and go, "Wow! It is amazing how fucking crazy I really am!"? Yeah. Do you guys do that?"
Good that he doesn't know of the existence of this blog or he might find his sense of humour being tested.
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The feeling of missing someone is a little bothering. At the same time I'm sad but also glad knowing that I, first and foremost, have someone to miss and secondly that I'm capable of this feeling. I couldn't even cry two years ago. I have changed quite much since.
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The Meme of the Day:
I don't know the song's official name let alone the performer, but a song with a chorus "I'm walking on sunshine" repeated thrice end finished wit the phrase something like "And don't I feel good" has been going on in my head since the second I woke up. The irony is that since the second I woke up it has constantly been raining... well, water in one form or another. Ah, well.... details, they're irrelevant and trivial in this matter.
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The picture is, by the way, by W. Eugene Smith. I think it's a visual presentation of how I feel at the moment.
I have an exercise for next week that is about Shaw's play called Pygmalion. I did some research yesterday so that I could confuse other students and my teacher by answering that particular question by using Pitman shorthand, which Shaw himself used when he wrote the preface to Pygmalion. So last night went by with me trying to learn to write again. I believe it is faster to write with Pitman but learning to use it as “second nature-ish” as I use the so-called normal Roman alphabet... that's going to take a while. I would like to give an idea what it’s supposed to look like by putting here an image of the X-Files tagline “the truth is out there” but I incapable of manipulating this computer so that it would give the picture the type of file required by Lepakkolaakso. So I suggest you to… to…. I will not use that word!... look it up from a search engine. Anyway, the Pitman shorthand, or the latest version of it, was used also in the movie “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. In the movie’s soundtrack there’s a song “Reasons to be Miserable” performed by the man with a brain size of Kent, Stephen Fry. So, as the Meme of the Day, I will make my own, albeit short, list of reasons to be miserable as a triumph to Marvin.
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The Meme of the Day:
A list of reasons to be miserable:
1) I can’t go to BodyCompat tonight
2) I’m still in Her power
3) my Macbeth analysis went straight to hell
4) Räsänen & co. still have prestige among some people who just can’t think for themselves
5) I’m horny and not getting laid (bloody libido!)
6) the weather outside is frightful
7) there are other people in the IT class; it’s Wednesday, shouldn’t you be getting ready to spend you’re entire student allowance in one night, get wasted, wake up in a strange bed tomorrow morning with a terrible headache next to a Muppet and realise you’re very late from a very important lecture?
8) I still haven't got a job for the forthcoming summer!
But I would also like to express my gratitude to Wanderer who cheered me up this morning. Blessings to you, too.
For 70 % you are angry:
From what you have described, it appears that you may be dealing with a great deal of anger in your life. Anger is caused by losing power, respect, and status; being insulted, not having things turn out as you wanted; being in pain; being threatened; having something important interrupted, and not getting what you need or want. Additionally, anger may come about if you are expecting pain, if you believe you've been mistreated, if you are judging a situation, or ruminating. To alleviate anger, it is important to gently avoid the provocative situation, and to try to counteract anger with kindness. It is useful to try and put yourself in another person's position to try and understand and be empathetic to their point of view.
For 30 % you are:
You also may be dealing with a great deal of sadness in your life. If you have been rejected, disliked, have discovered that you are powerless, have been with someone who has been hurting, if things have turned out badly, if you're not getting what you need, or if you've lost a loved one or a relationship, you may feel sad. Plus, if you believe that you are bad, a failure, stupid, not "good enough," a "loser," and that you are unlovable, you may feel sad. To combat sadness, it is important to engage in things that bring you pleasure, to be active, to not withdraw, and to do things that help you feel confident.
Just came from out fifth last English history lecture. I may have said this before, but this year, both the autumn term and the spring term, have gone so fast. It's already March. My life is just passing me by. Or maybe the Latin proverb is really this true... tempus fugit. But way too quickly!
Now, like the whole past two weeks, I'm looking forward to my translations lecture tomorrow. I found this week's translation rather interesting and occasionally very challenging. Even though I'm still sticking to my plan B (the idea of studying for another, complitely different degree sounds better and better by the day), I really (truely, bluely...) wish I have enough luck and talent to become a professional translation. In translation the thing I consider to be the meaning of life is fulfilled. And to me the meaning of life is to read and learn as much as you can about as many (and as) different areas as you possibly can, and then to use all this knowledge to get to know yourself as well as to the rest of the world around you. After all, one lifetime isn't nearly enough to complete that but I suppose it doesn't really even matter.
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The Meme of the Day:
Test how green you are at http://www.vihrea.net/index_html.php and tell me how green you are. I'm 90 % green, and damn proud of it! And remember to vote. It's only two numbers on a piece of paper but those two numbers can make all difference in the world.
Post scriptum: or three numbers, as I just discovered. I also made up my mind on the person I'm going to vote. I would also like to send my best regards to my mailman who kindly appreciates my request not to put any elections commercials in my mailbox. Nothing enrages me more than seeing (or reading) ads from Christian democrat candidates. That party has latent double standard, hyppocritic attitude all veiled in "the Christian values" (check the definition from about thousand CDs and you might get an approximate idea what they actually mean). And the most irritating thing is that they are complitely ignoring all those things. They're ranting and raving about equality based on the Christian values as long as this equality is not posed to the gay people, single women, immigrants, people with differernt religious beliefs and every single other minority there is. I would like to tell them to go fire the Surgeon General. Alas, they consider it a sin. Sorry, my mistake.
I'm writing this on my sister's computer. Right now I am so jealous because her computer is so much faster than mine (if you can call it a computer...). Not to mention that this has Windows XP. I'm still very much infected with a virus called Windows 98. I really should do something about it.
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I watched this year's Idols for the first time last night. I've been wondering what the whole fuss around Ari is about but I can assure every and each one of you that is very clear to me now. I was sitting in front of the television with my mouth open when he started singing. How can a guy who looks like a twelve-year-old have a voice like that? He probably wins the whole competition. But as my sister ponted out, it would be better if he came second. Then he could have a recording deal that actually looks like him. If he wins Idols, the songs for his first album wil be written for him, and it is unlikely they'll have much to do with heavy metal, or even metal. We'll see.
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I'm feeling quite tired. I woke up at 6 a.m. nd even the mere thought makes me yawn. Well, at least I got the first two pages of the essay written yesterday. It's not so bad now that I have something to contine with on Monday, which is probably the same time I'll be posting anything here.
And while you're at it, you might also want to try Gold Strike with the similar idea with an influence of gravity. Hint: try to prevent taking off the soil unless you really have to. This way it's easier to get higher scores when you have a whoe view of how to get as much gold in one strike as possible. http://www.flash-game.net/game/2020/gold-strike.html
"Pretending" being the operative word, surprisingly enough. Why is it that everything is so much more interesting if you have something mind-bogglingly boring to do? I am capable of doing it, I just don't want. I mean, I know that even at best it will be mediocre. But then again, it is enough. I only need a mediocre three to get four as the final grade. Oh, Salieri, the patron saint of mediocrities, please let me get a three out of this stupid essay!
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Tomorrow I'll be on my way to a sleepover at my aunt's (who did, by the way, apologise the next week when I told her in a polite manner why that one thing kept bugging me; see entry in 6th of November). She's now six months pregnant and I'm worried sick because of the forthcoming weekend. What if something happens? What if something goes wrong with the baby?? What if I have no idea what to do??? Let us hope nothing special happens. I have, however, no intentions none whatsoever to join the endless amount of people who see pregnant women as public cattle. I mean, complete strangers seem perfectly capable of ignoring that even pregnant women have physical immunity, and instead they go touching their bellies without asking their permition to do so. Even the mere idea of makes me shiver.
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The Meme of the Day:
At the end of Grey's Anatomy episode last night the viewers were presented with a question: if you knew you had but twenty-four hours to live, what would you do?
Me, myself and I answer: I would tell Her and everyone else who have positively influenced my life how much it has meant to me, and tell some other people to go fuck themselves if I feel that's what they deserve. Finally I wouldn't care about diets, but instead eat whatever I want as much as I want while watching my favorite X-Files episodes. To quote Mika: I want to be as social as a stone.
It's time for me to start working on my weekly translation. At least the field of the text, linguistics, is my cup of tea. Besides, I like translating. It's varying and in the process I learn of things I very likely wouldn't have even heard of.
I also had a pleasant surprise this morning when the sixth season of the X-Files arrived via mail. Sure, I still haven't seen the fifth season (should arrive later this week or during next week), but since I had already seen a certain episode from the 6th season I watched that. "How Ghosts Stole Christmas" was the name of the episode. Absolutely hilarious! Chris Carter can write some very funny episodes. But Darin Morgan rocks, too!
"There are worse ways to go, but I can't think of a more undignified one than autoerotic asphyxiation."
- "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose", 4th episode of the 3rd season, written by Darin Morgan -
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The Meme of the Day:
"I would prefer not to."
A phrase from Herman Melville's short story 'Bartleby the Scrivener'. A nice and polite and indirect way of telling someone you won't do something, and leaves the other party feeling guilty if they try to force you to do that something.
Right now, on a normal week, I would be enjoying my translations lecture. Stupid lecture-free week!
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Currently I'm (or should I say, s h o u l d be) typing in my various essays. That pain-in-the-ass Macbeth is still breathing on my neck and I should proceed to the next phase of the dialogue exercise (add the phatic uttarances, that is; next and to my luck the last phase is to make a fine distinction between the speakers through the language they us, in this case the other should speak very stereotypic women's language and the other should have a distinctive dialect). Then there is the fly-in-the-ointment translation studies paper to finish, not to mention the usual weekly school work: translation (task 7, I think), reading A Portrait a little further (this is probably the nicest part of the week, alongside the translation), doing my weekly homework for the English development course... But I have to do these all. If not because they give me some masochistic pleasure but because that is what I am to do; and besides, I probably learn something useful. So now that I've had my daily whining I could actually do something worthwile (can somebody tell my, by the way, where the name Wentworth [the Prison Break guy] comes from?).
And I miss Wanderer to lighten up my day. This week sucks (to use such a teenager verb...)!
Your sin has been measured. You have committed many sins, but Wrath is the mortal sin that has done you in. Just below, discover your full sinful breakdown and learn what it is about you that codemns you to hell.
Wrath - Very high
Pride - High
Greed - High
Lust - Medium
Envy - Medium
Gluttony - Medium
Sloth - Medium
